Starfall
by lancewolf6
Summary: His luck was never good. That was quite clear when his mom died when he was eight. He had survived the war through the way of the phoenix, when he was dead, he was reborn. Little did he know he was reborn into a world of horrors. But then again, a phoenix always has a burning day. Perhaps it was time he was actually reborn.


_Demons run when a good man goes to war._

_Night will fall and drown the sun,_

_When a good man goes to war._

_Friendship dies and true love lies,_

_Night will fall and the dark will rise__,_

_When a good man goes to war._

_Demons run, but count the cost._

_The battle's won but the child is lost. - _Doctor Who

* * *

><p>Juno Moneta to the Romans, Hera to the Greeks, Olympus' infamous goddess of the family, was kneeling in Camp Half-Blood's grass, looking at the ground in front of her. Her eyes gazed over the horrifying blood stain, her nose barely able to make anything else over the metallic odor in the air, her mind barely registering the scent as her thoughts were set ablaze with the decisions and posibbilties she could have made to stop what had just happened in front of her very eyes.<p>

All her carefully made plans and do's and don'ts have been for naught. She and she alone had let this tragedy happen. She was solely responsible as if she had committed the action herself.

Hadn't she though? Did she not bring this down upon him upon her belief that "everything's going to be all right" for those that she chose for the prophecy?

_Everything's going to be all right, Bah! _

Where in the entire universe was "Everything's going to be all right" purchased through the suffering, pain, and deceit of a hapless child, nigh an orphan?

She'd thought to toughen him up, to prepare him for the cruel actions of a merciless earth goddess. She had done that through and through only she was so reckless in all her schemes and wishing for good luck that she failed to take in the account of what would happen to the most important element after the war was finished... her grandson himself.

He was not a tool, but a person. He was a teenager, one that had hopes and dreams of being accepted despite his dark past, to get love and care and a home.

In every single way, she had let him find his own way and find his destiny as one of the Seven.

_Find his own way? _Who was she kidding? She had just abandoned him with the mortals right after his mother died!

Plan and forethought aside... she was just another fool.

_What force was there for a machine to keep going when there was no fuel? _

_What cause was there to exist when everything he did had no benefit?_

She had sat idly in the heavens while he was loathed back and forth by his harsh family for something he had no control with. Chased and tortured daily, hated by anyone who learned about him and his own past warding off anyone that might offer him a safe haven. Both mortal and monster were given free reign to persecute a scrawny and emotionally scarred child the second he set foot within the social system. And when he met his only friend? One of the many masks that he saw when he stumbled into when he saw a connection to the godly world.

Hera had gone so far as to coerce the Olympians to take a cold, unsympathetic stance, if not outright dismiss and ignore all concerns about him whenever they fell into contact with the future hero, no matter how ear-raising matters those meetings revealed.

Ouranos above... how she hated herself. Not only for what she did, but for what she failed to do.

His mother was dead. She could have done anything to save her, but she had convinced herself that it was the right thing to leave her where she was, so the boy had a martyr to fuel him. But what good had a martyr convinced someone to keep going when the war was over?

She could have given at least that, _a mother figure_, convinced any decent goddess to take him in.

But no, without a motherly figure, she could easily harden him even more, so he could get past trials of strife and pain.

She hardened him all right. She fortified him so strongly, that when he impacted against the ground, he had not only broken the ground, he had broken himself.

**This **is what results her scheming had yielded; a wondrous child driven to kill himself by his own emotional turmoil while the others thought everything was sunshine and roses.

**This **was the ending she had let her grandson have; a world filled with masks and heartbreak.

**This **is what she repaid for the mother's death and all his torments: nothing.

**This **is the what she gave to him in her promise all those years ago. Lies, and nothing to fight for, no cause for suffering.

Old knees used to walking through the world crumpled even in their eternal prime. Relentless weeping came out not for lack of gain, but what was forever lost in the depths of the underworld. Not for one "hero," or "one of the seven" or even for the new constellation that rested in the sky, but for a boy. A boy who had suffered so much, got little love and care, yet carried more compassion and love than one would ever know.


End file.
